July 28, 2016
A 11
Island Moon
Backwater Adventures By Joey Farah Farah’s Fishing Adventures I point out different fish and identify redfish and help anglers learn to predict their movements. Making perfect casts and pitches to feeding fish. Watching fish swallow your baits as well as run from a perfect presentation will teach you much about the art of sport fishing the shallow flats. Choosing a good shallow water Jeff Jay with one of bait is essential, a few great reds we start off with a DOA caught on his trip SHRIMP. These along with limits of baits are easy and trout! ACTION IS very productive, HOT GIVE ME A they enter the water CALL FOR A SLAM quietly and swim DUNK TRIP! naturally, but most important they don’t get hung up on the grass. Natural colors work best, especially in clear water and scares off less game fish. We head down to the famous nine mile hole, the south side of Baffin, and the East side of all of it. One on one guidance and lots of fish to cast to are what makes this a great couples or small group trip. You come away from that one with a new understanding of the ocean world below the surface as well as a bunch of good eats!
Most guests on the boat are curious about how the recent five trout limit has effected fishing for trout in our area. It doesn’t take long for that to be answered, trout fishing is OFF THE HOOK! In years past the end of summer saw guides and anglers from across the state traveling to the Upper Lagoon to enjoy big boxes of trout using live bait. Yes, in many of the other
These part-time Island residents spent the morning along the Flour Bluff Shoreline catching their limits of trout and one red this week on live piggy perch regions along the Texas coast fishing is good, but the chances to catch 40 trout were much better here than in Rockport or Port Aransas. When the limits changed to 5 fish those anglers chose to stay in their waters and we had half of the pressure and fish taken out of the Upper Lagoon. With anything in nature when you have a depleting stock nature gives you twice the growth. Now we have an extreme amount of 14-17 inch trout out there. At times they are in a frantic feeding mode competing for every bait thrown out. This can make for a very action packed trip. We do a lot of culling, putting our own minimum size limits on fish before they make it into the box. I’ll be excited to Me John with a Laguna see our fishing Shores redfish this week in a few years on a afternoon trip we when these baby spent brushing up skills boomers reach and showing him a few the ripe old age new spots. August Island of 6-8yrs old. when Moon special discount That’s many will reach trophy potential, making a new GOOD OLD DAYS.
The countdown to the end of summer and the first day of school has started. Find a day The reds are or two to get together defiantly turned to build a lifetime on now, LETS GO memory with your GET SOME DRAG kids and family. These are the best days of PULLED OFF! our lives, capture as many as them as you can. Give me a call to find your day on the water, and GET WET!
THE SIGHT CASTING DOWN SOUTH IS WORLD CLASS RIGHT NOW! We have been taking advantage of the best time of the year to wade or drift in my shallow skiff, sight casting and teaching anglers the finest ways to Hunt game fish with a rod and reel. Many people do not like to wade or perhaps have bad knees or feet, my skiff floats in 5” of water, so slow drifts and polling can sneak anglers within feet of tailing and hunting reds. Walking side by side
On the Rocks By Jay Gardner Roadkill Willie and I dumped the skiff yesterday after work and headed out into the Laguna. The clouds were nice, and made the evening drift after work pleasant, as we weren’t staring into the blazing setting sun. There was virtually no one on the water, and the flats were wide open for drifting. We eased up into Nighthawk, and threw a quick drift, but the only thing biting was a dink trout that was about the size of my topwater. We headed down wind towards the King Ranch Shoreline, and tried the edge of the ICWW where Rachel and Zep and I had done well just three days before. Again, zilch. The light was fading, and so far, it was pretty slow. We decided to throw a hail Mary, and just go down in the deep channel and throw some white lures under corks. That was the ticket, and I got a nice trout and two reds in about the last 20
minutes of light. It was going off pretty fast, and we were the only ones fishing the entire stretch of the KRS. I had forgotten how nice it is to fish during the week; especially after work when there is no one on the water. The last fish I reeled in was a 30” redfish that fought like the dickens. I hadn’t seen that deep into my line on the reel in quite some time. As the fish was near spooling me, I remarked how pretty and new the braided line looked on the bottom. Ha! After Roadkill netted the fish and eased it onto the deck, we both noticed that it was a beautiful, healthy redfish, although it was a few inches over the slot. As time goes on, there are more and more of these oversized redfish roaming our bays, and they are a blast when you hook into one. As we are near the end of July, and new licenses will be out in a couple weeks, I decided to use my oversize red drum tag on this fish. Use it or lose it, right? It’s actually pretty simple to tear the tag off the right bottom edge of your fishing license,
notch out the date the fish was caught on, and then fix the tag on the fish. The instructions say to do it with a piece of fishing line or wire at the narrowest part of the tail, but I just used a rubber band I had laying around and it worked great. You could likely use a clothes pin or something else, just make sure that the tag is on the fish and I’m pretty sure you’ll be fine. As fall gets closer, there will be more and more of these oversized redfish that will show up at the jetties and passes, and they will be intercepted by fishermen. Make sure to keep a ruler handy, as well as a pen/pencil, and be ready to “help” some folks tag these oversized brutes when they are landed and retained. It happens every year, and if you see folks not adhering to the rules, give Operation GameThief a call at 1-800-7924263. There can be substantial rewards for calling in and reporting folks who are way over the limit.
Well, it’s about that time folks. The chicharra’s are singing loudly (cicada’s) which indicates that we are nearing the crescendo of summer. Fishing licenses will need to be renewed, families will be trying to get their last summer vacations in before heading back to school, and football season is just a couple weeks out. What a great time to be on the Island! We just need to get through August, and the final summer hurrah with Labor Day that will be here before you know it. This weeks’s picture is of Brud Jones and his dad Larry Jones with a decent trout caught on a recent trip. Seems everyone is getting out there and enjoying the resources that we have right here in our own back yard. Nice photo, gentlemen. I need to get back out on the rocks and chase some tarpon before the jetties fill up with folks intercepting redfish out there. Drop me a line at tarponchaser@mail.com and I’ll see you all On the Rocks.
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